Kodi Smit-McPhee won’t make it to Austin for the premiere of his SXSW movie, The Wilderness of James, from first time writer/director Michael James Johnson. So we got to speak with Smit-McPhee in advance to preview the movie for those who’ll have a chance to see it at the festival, beginning Sunday at 7PM.
Smit-McPhee plays James, a troubled teen who finds a surrogate family with friends around the city of Portland, but keeps his distance from his widowed mother (Virginia Madsen). I also saw Smit-McPhee’s film Young Ones at Sundance and he’ll be in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes this summer. We ended up talking The Road, Let Me In and Paranorman too, so spoiler alert if you haven’t caught up on those films yet.
CraveOnline: I’ve seen you in movies starting with The Road when you were 13. Is there a limited window in which you can play roles like James, because either you’re a little kid or pretty soon your’e grown up?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: I think, yeah, that’s kind of a transition that every child actor has to make and it can be kind of hard sometimes but I’ve been really grateful. The last four or five jobs I’ve got, they’ve been kind of transitioning ones that’ve gone from boy to teen to man. I think I’m not only exploring myself but the different things I can do with this transition and growing up.
Are there certain types of roles you want to make sure you get to play before you outgrow this phase?
To tell the truth, I really just like to go with whatever’s happening and choose quality stories and things that pull strings within people, but I’d definitely love to do comedy, whenever that happens. I definitely have a whole different comedy side to me which is actually happy and not trying to make people cry all the time. But, I do love those darker things right now and I think that takes people to different places that you want to go to in life.
How guerrilla style was The Wilderness of James shot?
It was kind of verging on the edge of it but to tell the truth, every kind of indie experience that I’ve had has always felt more like just exploring and experimental and just very pure, exploring something that hasn’t been done before. I just really remember the experience within Portland itself. It’s such a young town.
This is sort of a cliché, but was the city of Portland another character in the film?
Absolutely. I think it was such a big thing. Michael was kind of explaining really the city to me more than the character sometimes. I fell in love with it so much. It was such a cool place to be. It was really just young and I love the bike riding and skateboarding. It’s totally me, and I think it really works with the character of the movie and the vibe of the movie. I think it definitely plays a big part.
Is it a unique place where there’s both big city urban life and the sort of nature that bookends the film?
Yeah, that’s what I love about it. You can go into this kind of animal wilderness of the city and there’s people, like I said, riding around on bikes and great coffee. Then you leave the town of skateboarders and music and then it’s just this beautiful wilderness of nature. It was such a cool place to film and most of the situations and places within the film are actually real and from Michael’s life. It was cool to experience that.
Being a first time writer/director, how unique was Michael’s approach to filmmaking?
I loved working with him. It really just, to tell the truth, felt like making a film with my friend. I was contacting him when I first read the script and just told him I loved it so much. We had a few meetings and I just stayed in contact with him until he could get it up and running. Eventually we were filming together. It was a lot of fun. Like I said, the story itself was really important to him and a lot of his past is in the story, so it was really special to him and I’m so glad that it’s out. The vision of what the movie is now is what it really felt like when I read it, so I’m happy.
Is that rare that a movie turns out exactly like you imagined?
I mean, usually I try to not see the movie or really anything until the absolute final product, so it’s always something different to what I was expecting. Better, always better. This really just fit into the idea of what I was reading and that was such a cool feeling. I think it’s the film Michael wanted to make definitely.
When there’s a scene where James is high and you play him high, how far can you play that? Where’s the line where you don’t want to go too far?
I think the line was drawn pretty well. I just wanted to be a kid smoking and escaping himself, changing and evolving, having fun for the first time. I think that’s all that part was about was just showing that you can escape life so much but really in the end, what happens to James, he just had to go back to his mother crying and the real stuff of life. It’s just showing that you go out of your box just to go back into it at the end of the day.
The scene at the end with Virginia Madsen, was that a particularly difficult scene to do?
Of course. I think there’s always, with any movie I’ve done, been a scene that I’ve thought, “Wow, that’ll be an interesting day” or something like that. Usually, we shoot those at the end of the film, after you’ve embodied a character and kind of lived it and know it back to front. I just try to go with the now or the moment, whatever is happening there. That’s kind of what happened. I’m really happy with that scene. It was a little bit of a challenge but I think at that point I knew James so well and I’d already known his whole journey that it was really just waiting for that moment at the end of the day.
What were those scenes you were concerned about on The Road or Let Me In?
Not necessarily concerned, but just knowing that I would have to take myself to a different place. The Road was when the father passed away and that whole intense, heavy scene. Let Me In was maybe that whole pool scene, because gosh, I didn’t know how that would go. We were in a huge 12 foot pool. We had to go underwater with the cameras.
You worked with Matt Reeves again in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Are you playing a human?
Yes, yes, I am. I’m playing the son of the lead character played by Jason Clarke who’s in a small band of humans within a small civilization of humans left after the virus had devastated the world after approximately 10 years. It’s really just about the small civilization of humans left and they’re trying to hold dominance and evolve and grow. They think there’s no apes anymore until they cross paths with Caesar and it all just clashes again, and it’s about that storm basically.
Is this a kid who’s pretty much grown up entirely in a world without other people?
Basically a different type of The Boy from The Road. He’s grown up in this post-apocalyptic world and it’s all he knows. He knows it better than maybe any of the other humans. It happened to them within their normal life, and he’s grown up with that, so I think that’s an interesting aspect always.
Is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes the biggest action you’ve ever done?
That is definitely the biggest, that big whole studio film thing, that’s definitely the biggest thing I’ve worked on and it felt like it too. There’s just more people and more things times a million, but the same amount of passion and love for the project always.
Did you have to re-audition for Matt Reeves?
I did. I did have to, but I think I totally should have. It shouldn’t have been a free pass or anything. I was in South Africa shooting Young Ones and Matt called me and said, “I’m doing Planet of the Apes.” I was so over the moon for him and he wanted me to audition so I did and got the job, and I’m so happy I got to work with him again. It was so surreal.
He’s doing the third Apes now so could you be in the third one also?
Yeah, that’s amazing that he’s doing the third one. That’s also so great. Apart from that, I don’t really know anything until they come out with that. I kind of assume they’d want to jump ahead in the future again. Who knows, maybe they’ll get into the real Planet of the Apes stuff when the apes take over. That’d be really cool to see.
Young Ones would be your third post-apocalyptic movie. Are you amazed how many different ways there are to explore that?
Definitely. I thought that would be the only one I did, The Road, but it turns out that these stories kind of show up a lot through my career. I think it’s cool how different they are and how unique each one is and the different lessons that each one shows. So I think that’s important. As long as it’s a different character and a different quality story within each apocalypse, that’s totally cool with me.
Has there by any chance been any talk of a sequel to Paranorman?
I really wish there was but I think everyone that worked on that really loves to show something and then move on, which I think is great. I think that keeps every story that they do quality and versatile and different. I think Paranorman was a great adventure. Who knows if they’re coming out with anything else.
Has your voice changed too much by now?
Oh, definitely. Actually on the last day, we recorded Paranorman over a year and I had 10 sessions to go in and do, on the last session my voice had changed so much they actually couldn’t use anything that we recorded. So if we do any more Paranorman stuff, it’ll be either teen Paranorman or maybe not even me.
That was a favorite of mine, and so special that the end was not about defeating the evil spirits, but asking them for forgiveness. Did you appreciate that theme?
Absolutely. I think that’s such a cool lesson. To show it within a stop motion movie and all the things that they did was infinitely amazing. I think also such a big lesson within most movies, and also Wilderness of James, I think is showing you that you shouldn’t fight something. You shouldn’t fight change. You should be absolutely open to change. Your ego will only want to fight change and when you let go of ego, it’s literally just pure love and love will open up to anything. It’s all about change and love I think.
Is it also rare to get to make a movie like Wilderness of James with so many other actors around your own age?
I think yeah, it is rare. It’s also a lot of fun when it happens. Most child actors are professional and here they were so professional, talented and amazing. I always have so much fun with the adults and the kids alike so it’s a great experience all around.
What is Slow West?
Slow West is a film that I did with Michael Fassbender in New Zealand and Scotland. The director was John McLean. It’s a film set in the 1800s. I play a young Scottish boy brought up in the royal family. I fall in love with someone who works on our land. She ends up fleeing to Colorado because she’s wanted for a bounty, a murder, something she didn’t do. I end up with all my royalty money following her and trying to find her. It’s just about my adventure trying to find my love from my point of few. Fassbender plays a bounty hunter, mysterious cowboy who helps me get there.
Is that your first period piece?
No, I did Romeo and Juliet. It was definitely my first legit western and that was really cool.
Young Ones is a western too.
True. True, futuristic western.
What did you get to do in Slow West acting-wise, character work, that was new and unique for you?
Definitely the Scottish accent was a little bit of a challenge but I love the accent. I think when you have to train an accent, it just takes you absolutely into another spectrum of the character. But, in that movie, I think it’s so different from Young Ones. I haven’t seen anything yet but John McLean also had a very strong vision for what he wanted to make. I think it’s a truly different vibe to anything I’ve ever done. To tell the truth, I can’t wait to answer that question and see how different it is.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
